#WeAreBrave
SPEAK OUT. SPEAK LOUD. SPEAK TOGETHER.
Welcome to a safe, carefully moderated world of testimonials from survivors of sexual assault and rape. Join our community by sharing your story or showing your support. This platform is meant to heal and not re-traumatize. Please remember to practice self-care if reading these stories is triggering to you.
The #WeAreBrave Story Platform has made BraveMissWorld.com the #1 Google search result worldwide for survivors seeking to share their stories. Yet it was born by accident. When Miss World Linor Abargil decided to step forward and speak publicly about her rape in 2008, she launched the website LinorSpeaksOut. Her mailbox was quickly flooded with emails from survivors wanting to share their stories with someone who would believe them and offer words of support. Linor met with many of the women and men who wrote to her, and included their stories in her film.
When the documentary Brave Miss World was completed and launched in 2014, LinorSpeaksOut was merged into BraveMissWorld.com, which became the online hub for survivors wanting to share their stories. With generous grants from The Artemis Rising Foundation, The Fledgling Fund, The Francis Family Foundation, and The Roy A. Hunt Foundation among others, the filmmakers and a small team of volunteers have curated this one-of-a-kind collection of over 2,500 testimonials, each carefully moderated to screen out any remarks that are disrespectful of survivors. We are committed to making sure that everyone submitting and reading stories on our site feels safe.
Our goal is to change the conversation around assault and rape. Women’s voices are finally being heard. Until now, we have not demanded that the culture be changed. We are saying no to the deafening silence that has surrounded rape and assault. We encourage members of our community to share their stories, because we believe that healing begins with speaking out and receiving support. Each story on our site receives a supportive comment from a trained advocate, as well as comments from our #WeAreBrave community. Every story is incredibly different and unique, but they all share the tremendous strength and resilience of survivors.
We know our platform works, because of the feedback from those using our site whose lives have changed in significant ways as a result of watching the film and/or sharing their story with others. Every day, new viewers and visitors discover and explore #WeAreBrave and many write to thank us for creating and maintaining this important space. For all those sharing their unique personal experiences and brave accounts of the lasting emotional impact of rape and assault, you are not alone.
Our work needs you. Your continuing support has enabled us to upgrade this site and add the ability to submit audio and visual testimonials. Please DONATE to help us make sure this resource continues to remain available to all those who need it. All donations are 100% tax deductible through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, Los Angeles Filmforum.
Contact us here: producers@BraveMissWorld.com
Watch the Emmy-nominated Brave Miss World on…
Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80222025
iTunes: http://apple.co/1Og611n
Amazon: http://amzn.com/B0194BJ5MO
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bravemissworld
Kidnapped and raped at gunpoint
Never Thought It Would Happen To Me
Lost Trust In Men For The Longest...
Wanted Love But Got Rape
Friends?
Gang Raped
Who is Responsible?
The Terrible 4
Miss
Time Stood Still
Scar
Spoke out and was blamed
The Statistics that Changed Me
random rape
My Daughter’s Rape
Summer 2019
A Day My Life Changed Forever
Ashly’s story
Indigo
I returned to fine art in 1990 when I took at class in indigo dyeing at San Francisco State University. I was lucky that the instructor, Yoshiko Wada, and another student from her class, were in the East Bay so that we could carpool together. We would talk textiles on our weekly journey across the Bay Bridge to the Campus. The other student was an accomplished Quilter named Linda MacDonald. Linda lived in Willits near the famous Mendocino Art Center, but traveled to Berkeley to attend this class once a week.
The Indigo vat was made in a 32-gallon garbage can and had to be kept covered between dyeing sessions. Indigo is a unique rich blue dye that develops with an oxidization process when exposed to air. Dipping the fabric several times, and allowing the natural fiber to oxidize before dipping it again, creates darker shades of blue. The dye in the vat is created from a mixture of indigo pigment, various chemicals and a reducing agent to remove oxygen from the dye. It is a rich green color while in the vat, which shows up on the fabric before it is fully exposed to the air. The smell emitted from the dye is unusual, a musky odor in my mind. I like to think that it smells like the color blue. The vat needs to be carefully stirred and maintained between dyeing sessions. There is a “bloom” on the top of the vat created by oxidized indigo, making a bubbly and shiny ball of material reminiscent of a flower. The “bloom” gets moved to the side before entry of the pre-wetted fabric. The process reminds me of baking bread or making yogurt where the steps need to be carefully followed to achieve the desired results. In the process of bread and yogurt making, there are living cultures involved in order to create the product, and with the creation and dyeing process of indigo, it has that same feeling of being alive.
In order to create interesting patterns, my classmates and I would use resist techniques on the fabric like pastes, stitching and clamping. Simple household items like clothespins could be used to create patterns by folding and then placing the pins at intervals along the fold lines. Beautiful and surprising results were achieved using these methods.
Image of Indigo dye on fabric during the oxidization process.
My dream of being a professional artist, all started in early childhood, and the first memories of my creations go back to Nursery School. I loved playing with all kinds of materials, like paint, clay, and crayons, just to name a few examples.
Mel (Melanie), painting at Jack and Jill Nursery School, Walnut Creek, California, 1960.
In 1974, a neighbor in Marin where I was living at the time and studying art at College of Marin told me about an Art School in Mexico. I ended up sending off slides of my work with an application to the Instituto Allende, and was delighted to hear that I was accepted. I began my journey to study there in San Miguel de Allende by flying to Mexico City in January of 1975. A bus ride completed that journey.
When I first arrived, I moved in with a family who had two small children, including a newborn. It seemed like a safe living situation for a 19-year-old woman, but that shortly proved to not be true when the husband started coming on to me. I ended up finding my own place on the other side of town. It was a spacious abode with a wall that was shared with a weaving factory next door. There were 2 adjoined bedrooms, a bathroom, a large living/kitchen area and a small concrete patio out the back door. There was no hot water, refrigerator or a telephone. When I needed hot water for dishes, I would boil some on the stove. For showers, I had to build a fire in a box below a water tank outside to get hot water. I felt much more secure living there and walking a further distance to the Instituto on the other side of town than living with the husband who had made me feel so unsafe. There was the Central Plaza, which was called the “Jardin” that was in the middle of town, and I would pass through it on my walk quite frequently. This was the site of fireworks and festivals, like the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. The streets were cobblestone and many charming shops and galleries were located downtown. The School itself was on a beautiful campus with large ornate doors in front that were closed when school was not in session.
Photo of the closed front doors of the Instituto Allende
I had heard about you and what you had done to other women before you appeared in my main living space one sunny spring afternoon pointing a gun at me.
You had a bandana wrapped around your face and tied behind your head.
I had heard you first, in the bathroom.
Dressed in a long polyester dress with colorful psychedelic patterns.
I wasn’t wearing any underwear or shoes.
I walked through the 2 bedrooms and turned left when I saw you standing there.
I screamed and shouted, “help me,” thinking that workers at the Weaving Factory would hear me and come rescue me.
Nobody came.
You said to me “Coyote” which I later learned meant to be quiet or to shut up.
You grabbed my shoulders and dragged me out the unlocked back door onto the concrete patio.
The tops of my feet got scraped.
I gave up.
I knew you were going to rape me.
I just wanted you to finish as quickly as possible.
You took off your belt and put down your gun.
Somehow I managed to pick up your gun and threw it over the wall embedded with glass on the top, into the alleyway. The same wall you had climbed over to get into my place through the unlocked back door.
Towards the end of this ordeal, I heard a knock on my door.
You left, climbing back over the wall.
I answered the door. My friend Rhonda had come by to visit me.
I told her what had happened and we walked to the Police Station nearby.
I had your belt with me. The one you left behind.
I went to the front counter, telling the officers behind the counter what had happened to me. They were laughing and playing cards at the time.
I showed them your belt.
They told me to bring you in if I saw you again.
I left with Rhonda and took a bath at the where place she lived. We didn’t talk about what happened.
We moved in together shortly after that.
I sent a telegram to my father and stepmother about what had happened to me.
Nobody came to help me.
Rhonda helped me when I got hepatitis A and could no longer go to school.
I was on my own when it came to figuring out how to return to the Bay Area.
I moved in with my father and stepmother.
They didn’t talk to me about what happened to me.
They sent me to a doctor who diagnosed me with type 1 diabetes. He showed me how to give myself insulin injections. He told me to practice by injecting oranges with empty syringes.
My mother told me years later that “You were never the same again” after what you did to me.
I survived. I gave up art for 15 years before realizing that I wanted to go back to art school. In those years, I became so disturbed that I had panic attacks, deep depression and needed to move in with my mother at age 30. I started therapy after becoming self destructive in my 20’s.
Depression also called “the blues” has been my long time companion. It has taken me a lifetime to heal. My iPhone predicts the words, depression, PTSD and C-PTSD for my text messages.
After my Indigo dyeing class at San Francisco State, I enrolled in the Textiles Fine Art program at California College of Arts and Crafts (now known as California College of the Arts) in Oakland. I was married at the time and had become pregnant with our daughter Emily right before classes started in September. Emily was born on May 13, 1991. By the Fall of 1992, I was a single mom and an art student. An inheritance from my mother who died in 1995, allowed me to graduate and to buy my first home.
I continued to work with indigo dyeing and created a large textile piece about my experience in Mexico.
After many years of therapy and other healing modalities, I recently started painting on canvas. Part of that process has been a Soul Retrieval session to bring back my 4 year old self who loved to paint. I am feeling uplifted and encouraged after many years of recurring periods of severe emotional pain. Stay tuned for more details about my new work.
One of my final pieces was a textile called “Out of the Blues.”Innocence Taken
Thank you
Too naïve
Confused and Angry
Too naïve
“Me too” On Facebook
כמוני כמוך
The Woods Don’t Speak
I was 8 years old
Kidnapped
ללינור היקרה
He bought me chips and sent me...
Sexual assault/ sex trafficking
Gang Rape At 15 Years Old
No Title Will Stop How I Feel
Inspired
חיה בשני עולמות מקבילים
Still Rape
Why me?
An Unknown Face & Hands
3 Generations
Locked Up
Ya perdoné pero nunca olvido
Sexually assaulted at 4
I Really Want To Forget About It
ללינור היקרה
Childhood Trauma
Domestic Abuse
CPS Let My Rapist Walk Free
Hidden But Not Forgotten
Everyone loves him
Blamed Myself
Chaos
Overcome It
Only I get to make choices for...
Friend of my Husband
I still feel like it’s my fault
Ended in Rape
Only 12
13 and 16
Time To Tell
לא יוצאים מזה…
Employer rape
They Laughed
My Mom
Drugged
Breakin Burgler
Someday Soon
I Blame Myself
High School
Assault?
Date Rape
My Story
Chiropractor
Life of Trauma
Such Shame
I thought I trusted them
We were drunk
Too Young
How to handle it
A Night I Can’t Remember
It will get better
Last Party
Shelter My Soul
Flashbacks
Tulane Law
His Masterpiece
My so called “best friend”
Victimization
My Husband thought he was entitled to...
Molested by my cousin
I guess it was rape
Raped by a US Marine when I...
J’avais 13 ans
Unethical or illegal?
Ready to Share
I dont know what to call it
First Frat Party
Around 9 PM
My Story, My Nightmare
“Me too” On Facebook
So long, I’ll be seeing you everywhere
Ruined
Six Years Old
He Was a Friend
I can say it now
There are a lot of assholes on...
Nothing important…
I just wanted to give him a...
Years later… meeting my rapist again
Out of Control
Bad Programming
הטראומה הכי קשה בחיי
So Now What?
Abusée par un voisin de mes grands...
My rape story
The First Time
Virgin Rape
Assaulted by my neighbor
Proud
An uncle who couldn’t keep his hands...
גבר אלים וחולני
My story growing up with a secret
Sex doll
I was raped
Do I say thank you?
Naïve
Black Girl
Raped in the Air Force
First “Real” Boyfriend
Scammer
Rape Is Everywhere
It’s A Long Story
So drunk I can’t remember
Multiples Agressions Sexuelles
Metoo
He Was a Cop
Keep it to myself
My/our German “Weinstein” Case
School Rape
Log
My Rape Stories
He Took My Virginity
Lying Child Molester
Army
Nashville Sweetheart
Trauma
היי לינור
Mi Esposa
Everyone Else Likes You, Too
Ms.
Left Me In Pieces
He Was My Friend
Rape is Real
Believe Her
My Story
Alcohol
I Didn’t Want to Do It
I Was Only 7
Piece
i was a child.
Deja Vu
Broken Girl
Pretty Girls
Survivor of child molestation and date rape
Date Rape
Too Young
Male dancer
Am I really that broken?
HE Haunts Me
I didn’t even know what was happening
Never Thought It Would Happen to Me
My posting
A respectable collegue
I didn’t say no
Perfect on Paper
Rape
Trader Joes
Raped by Him
To inspire and encourage
My step dad raped me
Never Again
Raped at 16
Always the Girls Fault
After Wedding
I didn’t know what to do
My Coach My Rapist
En Enero de 2010
Twice
My Best Friend
2-4 am on January 15th
Stronger Every Day
Is love assault?
I was used. I got left. I...
Second Night of College
Finally Healing
When My Body Wasn’t Mine.
My boyfriend of 2 years
I know when I see a rapist...
How My Life Has Changed
My/our German “Weinstein” Case
My Mother was raped and told me...
יש חיים אחרי אונס
My step dad raped me
Family
Just Words
Frozen in fear
Brock and Will
Sexist Families Leave Girls Vulnerable to Rape
Two Friends and Two Boys
sexual assault
I Was Only 7
גבר אלים וחולני
Raped By My Brother
Erase and Rewind
Unsure
Dating & Relatives
לדבר, להלחם, לנצח
Over 40 years Ago
First Love to Long Term Abuse
I Never Give Up
